Aug 30th, 2006
The comedy of automated marketing strategies.
Highlighting additional products to online customers is effective when the match is appropriate. But when it’s wrong, it can be cringeworthy.
My publisher, HarperCollins suggests other titles on the page that features my book, Families Like Mine. I presume the suggestions are based on frequently used words: family, marriage, family values, children, parenting. Take those key words, match them to other HarperCollins titles that also use those words frequently, and there should be some overlap in readership, right?
Well, here’s what their key-word generator lists with Families Like Mine under “Books similar to this one:”
The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands
By Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Women want to be in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Yet disrespect for men and disregard for the values, feelings, and needs of husbands has fast become the standard for male-female relations in America, often creating struggle and strife in what could be a beautiful relationship.Woman Power
By Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Woman Power: for the woman who wants to ensure for herself — and for her man — the marital happiness and success everyone dreams of!
Obviously a human being at HarperCollins has yet to notice this cross-marketing faux pas.
Unless by “similar” they mean “polar opposite.”
That’s too funny–in a sad sort of way. Reminds me of what happens when I Google “lesbian moms.” (The actual results are getting better, but the sponsored ads are mostly what you’d imagine.)
If memory serves me correctly, wasn’t Dr. Laura at one point in her career a staunch feminist who was not a right-wing Christian with right-wing values? Did one day she decide to go to the grocery store and turned into an evangelist by stopping at a Church after the market? I think a “What happened to Dr. Laura” story is in order.
BWAHHH! Ohhh, funny and sad.